


Double Blind Experiments

by Turandot (LostOzian)



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Blind Date, Children think Coffee Dad and Gun Dad should date, Coffee Dad and Gun Dad might be into it, Fluff, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Persona 5 Spoilers, They're good dads brent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:22:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22609978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostOzian/pseuds/Turandot
Summary: Lying to your father figure isn't exactly a good thing, but maybe it will work out for the best if you're doing it in order to set him up on a date with another father figure.Sojiro and Munehisa aren't amused, but they salvage some entertainment from the night anyway.
Relationships: Iwai Munehisa/Sakura Sojiro
Comments: 8
Kudos: 114





	Double Blind Experiments

Iwai refuses to eat anywhere fancier than a diner. The best Kaoru and Akira can do is steer him toward a diner that’s not the _usual_ diner. And even once they sort that out, getting him to dress up is a torment. He treats his cap and duster and boots like they’re part of his skin. Kaoru knows Iwai wore nice clothes to his elementary school graduation, so it’s just a matter of finding the box Iwai had stowed them in and then shoving the outfit at him until he put it on.  
  
“You need to make a good first impression!” Kaoru insists. “This is really important!”  
  
“I’m not going to lie to this lady about who I am,” Iwai says flatly, the same tone he used when he would tell Akira off for making weird purchases or sales at the airsoft shop.  
  
“It’s not lying, you’re just supposed to look nice on a first date! Sakura-san is sure to be dressed up, too!”  
  
Akira runs calculations as he examines the dark sweater laid out on the Iwai residence’s couch. Ann can probably do a better job dissecting it, but it’s charcoal and smooth, with a fine knit that makes it look expensive. Maybe it even _is_ expensive. And as much as they’re trying to convince Iwai to change himself just for a night, just for a date, Akira is aware of the one piece of information they’re holding back about ‘Sakura-san.’ He’s still not totally sold about the idea that the ex-government coffee shop owner and the ex-yakuza airsoft store owner will find love, but Futaba is certain that Sojiro has interest in men and just needs a nudge, while Kaoru has some gut feelings that Iwai is open-minded about who he dates.  
  
“What, are you scared?” Akira challenges. Iwai frowns, so he follows up, “If you wear your shop clothes to a date, it’s going to set a bad example for Kaoru.”  
  
Iwai looks sourly at Akira, but Kaoru catches his cue to nod at his dad, beaming. “Yeah! You have to teach me how to show respect on dates!”  
  
“Alright, fine, we’ll play this your way,” Iwai huffs. He reaches over to ruffle Kaoru’s hair, frustration in the gesture but affection on his face. Kaoru laughs. “And you’re going to show me that your homework is done before I leave, got it?”  
  
“I will, promise!”  
  
“And you, you’ll be fine closing up shop, right?” Iwai tells Akira.  
  
“Actually, someone had to call out at one of my other part-time jobs,” Akira lies. “Sorry for the trouble.”  
  
Iwai clicks his tongue, but picks up the sweater. “Fine. I’ll get this damn thing steamed.”  
  
While Iwai walks away, Akira’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He pulls it out to see a victorious text from Futaba: _Mission start!_

* * *

  
  
Sojiro walks the streets of Shibuya, a scrap of paper in his hand referencing the cross-streets of this unfamiliar diner. He only checks it a few times as he approaches, since the area is so familiar. Hope and apprehension are dueling for his attention in his heart. Futaba had put him up to this, first with a brash and causal assumption that Sojiro obviously wanted to go on a date with the mother of one of her friends, and later with the sincere confession that Futaba wanted Sojiro to have nice things, like friends and a dating life. He couldn't argue with that.  
  
But at the core, it’s hard to feel like he’s ready for this. He has his white suit, classy hat, and fresh cologne, and a heap of butterflies in his stomach. How long has it been since he thought about anyone but Wakaba? How long has it been since he swore off dating altogether? Men and women do this all the time, and Sojiro used to do this all the time too. That doesn’t make it any easier to start all over again.  
  
He finds the diner just a few minutes late. Bells ring as he pushes the door open, and a waitress in a white shirt and apron greets him. “Welcome! Are you dining alone, sir?”  
  
“There should be a reservation,” Sojiro tells her. “For Sakura.”  
  
She nods and ushers Sojiro into the restaurant. There are no booths, but some tables are more secluded than others. There’s a small one on the left side, near a wall hanging, which the waitress leads him to.  
  
And there’s a man sitting at the table.  
  
At first, Sojiro can’t process what he’s looking at. The other man looks stunned too, and the waitress leaves another menu on the table before departing, leaving them to it.  
  
“Sakura-san?” the other man asks. He has a rough and strong voice, like the burlap bags that Sojiro’s prized coffee beans come in.  
  
“Sojiro Sakura,” he introduces. Should he sit down? He couldn’t sit down at a table with a man, not for a date… but he couldn’t just run out the door either, not without making a scene.  
  
The other man nods and kind of smiles. “Looks like our kids played a hell of a prank on us.”  
  
“You were expecting a woman, too?” Sojiro asks.  
  
“Thought ‘Sakura’ was your first name,” the other man explains.  
  
Well, now that the man just confessed to confusing Sojiro for a woman, he can’t help feeling offended. “Sorry to have wasted your evening, then.” He’s going to walk right out of this diner and never come back…  
  
“Hang on,” he says, raising a hand. “My son told me this was his idea, but this feels more like some shit my part-timer would pull. I’m thinking I’ll take the cost of this dinner out of his pay. That’ll serve him right, and we’ll get a free meal.”  
  
“…It’s pretty fitting,” Sojiro concedes. Besides, what would he do if he went home? Leblanc was already closed, so all that he can do is have a tense conversation with Futaba about meddling and boundaries, which will probably make her cry even as she apologizes. And there’s something familiar about the idea of a part-timer being so meddlesome… “Your part-timer wouldn’t happen to be named Kurusu, would he?”  
  
The man blinks, then chuckles. “So he’s our connection, not our kids.”  
  
The anger finally faded, and Sojiro manages a smile, too. “Tell you what, let’s order alcohol too.” He sits down across the table from the other man. “Really make this hurt for him.”  
  
The other man smirks, and Sojiro finally takes a good look at him. He’s got cropped-short hair with sideburns, two hoops in one of his ears, and a lizard tattoo on his neck, just poking out of the tall collar of his sweater. His jaw is square, with some growing stubble that’s trimmed enough Sojiro can tell it’s on purpose, and his eyes are shotgun-barrel grey. “Do you like sake or beer?”  
  
“Usually just coffee,” Sojiro says. “But how about you tell me your name before we decide what we’re drinking?”  
  
The other man reaches across the table. His hands are strong, and strangely, the softest part of him so far. “Munehisa Iwai.”

* * *

  
  
“They’ve decided to stay!” Futaba tells her microphone. “But you have to cover the bill. Alcohol included.”  
  
“ _Dammit,_ ” Akira whispers, the sound distorted by Futaba’s tinny speakers. “ _If they order anything more expensive than Sapporos, I won’t make any money tonight._ ”  
  
“You’ve got a lock box of cash in your room, you’ll be fine,” Futaba says.  
  
“ _That’s the team reserves._ ”  
  
“News flash, ‘Joker,’ we disbanded. The best use for that money is this new romance route!”  
  
“Sorry… what are you talking about?” Kaoru interjects. He’s perched awkwardly on one of the Sakura family’s kitchen chairs, staring at Futaba’s mess of code and windows. She has her usual bug on Sojiro’s phone listening intently. Akira also wears an earpiece threaded up the back of his shirt. Futaba mostly wanted an excuse to try out a new piece of spy equipment, and Akira’s presence will be essential in making sure this goes well. Attacking his frizzy mop with a hair straightener really changed his look, but it won't stand up to scrutiny from someone who knows him. He’ll only be able to act if it’s an emergency.  
  
“Akira and I were in an adventuring party,” Futaba answers Kaoru cryptically.  
  
“ _They ordered the Dassai Fifty!_ ” Akira’s groan of complaint cuts across the line. “ _That’s three nights of work here!_ ”  
  
“Stay strong, leader!” Futaba encouraged. “This will all be worth it in the end!”

* * *

  
  
“So Akira probably introduced your son to my daughter,” Sakura muses. “He’s starting high school next year, right?”  
  
“Yeah. The entrance exams are close, but I’m not worried. Kaoru takes school seriously,” Munehisa states—or brags, more like.  
  
“Hopefully that will rub off on Futaba. She’s talented, but sometimes it makes her think that the rules don’t apply to her. She says things to me like, ‘why do I need school, I can look things up online.’ The trouble is getting her to care enough to apply herself.” Sakura chuckles to himself a little.  
  
“Was she always like that?”  
  
“More or less. She had her weird streak, but a lot of her friends do, too. They stick up for her.”  
  
“That’s the best you can hope for,” Munehisa notes. A server brings their sake, and Sakura fills their cups with the deft skill of a barista.  
  
“Can’t believe I’m doing this, honestly,” Sakura says.  
  
“Doing what?”  
  
“This. Men shouldn’t go drinking this way, but this place doesn’t have a bar.”  
  
Munehisa has seen office workers go at it, all lined up at the bar or on opposite sides of a long table. “Seems like too much trouble to go to a bar when we already have the table.” He accepts the cup from Sakura, impressed that his pour didn’t waste a single drop.  
  
“I suppose, but there’s some activities a man should only do with a woman.”  
  
The comment feels like how squealing car brakes sound. Munehisa holds his cup but doesn’t drink. “Like what?”  
  
“It’s obvious stuff. Dinners for two, going for drives, walking too close, saving each other in your contact list—”  
  
Munehisa laughs hard enough he has to set down his cup to make sure he doesn't slosh it.  
  
“What’s so funny?”  
  
“You should learn from your daughter,” Munehisa says. “You’re following too many rules.”  
  
“There’s just some activities where you can’t treat men and women the same,” Sakura retorts. Maybe Munehisa’s laughter feels like squealing brakes to him. “These are just my principles.”  
  
“Nothing wrong with having principles,” Munehisa says. “Living by a code of honor is the most important things a man can do. But your code sounds like it’s less about honor and more about appearances.”  
  
Sakura’s brow furrows at him. His whole face is sharp and distinct, like a falcon. “Don’t tell me you’re _actually_ …”  
  
“Don’t get me wrong, women are nice too. Men just understand you better. It’s nice. You can focus on what really matters, instead of playing games about what men and women should and shouldn’t do.”  
  
“So you’ve… _actually_ dated—“  
  
“Men.” It’s not something Munehisa says out loud often, since he rarely has a reason to. But something makes him want to push Sakura. Either he’ll run from the diner, screaming, or he’ll stay and prove that he’s got guts. “You got a problem with that?”  
  
The other man’s eyes have gone wide, and he watches Munehisa with suspicion… and maybe even with interest. Curiously, Sakura’s next move is to fish his phone out of his pocket. He holds down a button on the side until it turns off, and then he leaves it on the table face-up, like he needs to monitor it. Munehisa recognizes it as something a person would do if they thought their phone was bugged. And now Munehisa wonders why Sakura thinks there might be a bug. And how Sakura knows what to do to counteract one.  
  
“…I always thought ‘that path’ was a dead end,” Sakura says. His voice is lower now. It feels like huddling close to a street lamp at midnight. “Even if I felt that way, I didn’t see a future with those relationships. So I… ignored it.”  
  
“Well, you took the path with the future anyway,” Munehisa comments. “A delightful little daughter all your own.”  
  
“Futaba is adopted,” Sakura says. Munehisa sits up straighter in spite of himself. “Futaba’s mother, a dear friend of mine, died a few years ago.”  
  
Maybe it’s the fact that Munehisa had laid his secrets bare recently—first to Akira, and then to Kaoru himself—but the words come easier than they ever have before. “Kaoru’s adopted, too.”  
  
“No kidding?” Sakura leans forward too. “When did you adopt?”  
  
“He was a baby,” Munehisa says. There’s so much more boiling in his mouth, about Kaoru’s mother, and the yakuza, and the lies he told, the lies he could easily tell again, but he keeps it back. “No one else wanted him.”  
  
Sakura nods. He opens his mouth like he’s going to say more, but a waiter arrives with their meals, placing plates in front of them. Munehisa grumbles ‘thank you’ alongside Sakura, and the waiter vanishes. Munehisa waist for Sakura to finish his thought, but he smiles a little. “Wasn’t that important,” he dismisses. “This looks good.”  
  
Right, time to eat. Munehisa had ordered beef specifically to spite his supposedly-trustworthy part timer, so he might as well enjoy it.  
  
…Did the table always have a tea candle on it?

* * *

  
  
Futaba’s fingers fly over her keyboard as a new bug kicks on. “Smooth moves! Knew we needed to have a backup bug ready… but it looks like we missed the good part.”  
  
“ _Sojiro didn’t leave, so it must have gone well,_ ” Akira mumbles at his earpiece.  
  
Kaoru runs his fingers over his birthmark. Futaba and Akira are so on top of things, it makes him feel awkward with how inexperienced he is. On top of that, he just heard his dad say something he was sure he never would have said to Kaoru aloud. All they had to go on this was Futaba’s hacked internet records from her father, and some comments Kaoru’s dad had made to him when he was starting to think about dating.  
  
“ _You’re going to get a lot of advice from people who have no business giving it. Let me tell you the only things that matter. One, if someone tells you no, that means no. There’s no rule more important than that. And the other rule is… no matter who you want to bring home, you gotta_ come home, _understand? Don’t hide from me. There’s no one you could love that will make me disappointed in you._ ”  
  
That had been the advice the little trio used to decide that Kaoru’s dad might want to go on a date with a man. Kaoru hadn’t thought it mattered all that much until just this moment, now that he knows that his dad had boyfriends before. On the one hand, thinking of romance between his dad and _anyone_ is really off-putting. On the other… was that advice for Kaoru something that his dad wished someone had said to him?  
  
He sits and thinks for a long time. The confessions that Kaoru’s mother had tried to give him away, and that his dad had been in the yakuza, are still fresh. It’s hard to contemplate another revelation on top of that. What had his dad’s life been like, when he was young? Who had been there for him when he was trying to figure all of this out? Had the advice he got back then been anywhere near as good as the advice Kaoru got?  
  
Kaoru rouses from his contemplation when he hears Futaba groan. She pushes back from her desk dramatically and stands up. “I’m going to get some instant yakisoba, do you want any?”  
  
“Huh? Yes? Wait, shouldn’t we still be listening?” Kaoru asks. How do stakeouts work again?  
  
“They’ve started talking about business taxes,” Futaba says. “Old men on a date are just as boring as old men anywhere else. Come get me if they say anything interesting…”  
  
Kaoru nods and scoots his chair closer to the monitor, watching the wiggly lines on Futaba’s screen as they matched Sakura-san and his dad’s voices. He has a hard time understanding exactly what they’re discussing, but right now it seems like a forthright talk about retail versus food service taxation, and where their fees overlap and differ.  
  
_Does it mean that Dad likes Sakura-san if they can have fun talking about boring stuff?_

* * *

Sojiro has to admit, Iwai knows his stuff. It’s a sound business he runs, and he’s even recovering well from that internet troll spreading rumors about the quality of his goods. There’s craftsmanship in a gun, artistry in making something harmless look dangerous, and Sojiro understands why Iwai’s hands are the softest part of an otherwise steel-strong man.  
  
Shivers crawl down Sojiro’s spine at the thought, but he’s getting used to them. Every few minutes, when Iwai shows expertise or wit or stubbornness or pride, Sojiro gets a shiver, a pang of _what the hell am I doing here?_ that he pushes past and ignores. He’s here to have a nice night and he’s not going to ruin it for himself. It would have been one thing if the kids called it a date just to get their dads to meet each other. Har har, nice one. But Iwai told him that he had dated men, which meant suddenly, this _could_ be a date all over again. This could be a betrayal: of society, of Sojiro’s beliefs, of Wakaba. But the longer they ate and drank and talked, the more Sojiro feels that this isn’t all that bad.  
  
“What’s the most interesting model you’ve customized recently?” Sojiro asks between bites. Iwai rubs his chin, thinking it over. Sojiro thinks that thoughtful is a good look for him. Then he shivers, but he ignores it.  
  
“Must’ve been _Governance_. Not the flashiest thing I’ve ever customized, wasn’t even that recent, but I was real proud of it. Something about the balance. Could’ve been real.”  
  
“Never heard of that model.”  
  
Iwai fixes Sojiro with a look. It’s kind of like a raised eyebrow, but more like he lowers one and leaves the other alone. “What do you know about firearm models?”  
  
Sojiro smiles. He thinks, _won’t this throw him for a loop?_ and then lets another shiver pass, ignored. “In a previous job, I was firearm certified. Never had a weapon issued to me, but I had to know my way around a pistol.”  
  
Stunned is a good look for Iwai. Maybe it’s too close to the last shiver, but Sojiro doesn’t even feel weird as he grins at Iwai, waiting for his assessment. “New Nambu M60?”  
  
He got it in one. “I wasn’t a cop, if that’s what you’re worried about. Just some glorified watchdog for researchers spending a lot of taxpayer money in ways taxpayers might not like.”  
  
“I don’t like my taxes spent on anything that isn’t a school or a hospital,” Iwai says.  
  
Sojiro lifts his sake as a small toast. He’s personally more tolerant of frivolous government projects, but Iwai’s attitude spares Sojiro from having to explain cognitive psicence, which is worth something.  
  
Iwai follows up, “Why did you need a gun?”  
  
“Someone else in my unit had the gun issued to him. We all had to know how to use it. We were told it improved security if attackers didn’t know which, or how many of us, were armed.” Sojiro drinks. “But maybe I’m just showing off. Nothing all that thrilling happened on that assignment.”  
  
“You still know how to shoot?” Iwai asks, and Sojiro just groans, a noncommittal answer. “There’s a shooting range in Shinjuku. I can let you try out my private collection, if you got the time.”  
  
Sojiro doesn’t even find that funny, but a laugh escapes him. The shiver feeling reaches a trembling intensity, and somehow, Sojiro still has the will to ignore it. “I’ll have to think about it. Who taught _you_ to shoot?”  
  
“Old friends.”  
  
_Oh, that’s not suspicious._ “Are they the same friends who gave you your tattoo?” Sojiro gestures along his own neck.  
  
“That was later.”  
  
“Later, hm?”  
  
“The gecko is the symbol of protection for my family. Kaoru has a birthmark in the same shape. I needed to match.”  
  
There’s something so complicated and simple about the way Iwai talks. It’s the same feeling as looking at a reflective pond, a dark surface with no idea how deep it goes. It’s deceptive in a way that Sojiro finds familiar, but with no malice to it. It's just the past, laid to rest.  
  
“The piercings, then.”  
  
“Oh, right,” Iwai thumbs his ear. “Yeah, my friends did give me those.”  
  
“They suit you.”  
  
Iwai—no, Munehisa—smiles. Smiling suits him, too.

* * *

  
  
Maybe it’s the second bottle of sake—some bus boy sighs and pinches his nose when he sees the ticket, but he serves them without complaint—but it’s been a while since Munehisa unwound with someone. Sakura’s sharp, in command of his self and his space. It’s nice to relate to someone like this: someone with history, someone with hope, someone with sense.  
  
Still, that initial comment draws a line that Sakura surely won’t cross. If ‘that path’ is a dead end to him, Sakura will never consider this a date. Munehisa is fine with that. This evening has been nice enough that he won’t be angry over a lack of romance. Munehisa has never cared much for coffee, but he has a feeling anything Sakura created would go down like velvet. It takes time to learn the nuances of coffee, like it takes time to learn the nuances of firearms. Munehisa has a feeling that he’d like to learn enough to have a favorite blend for once. He always took coffee black, and figured it was supposed to feel like a slap in the face. Maybe there’s coffee that can hurt in a good way, like popping a dislocated shoulder back into place. Even though he knows he’ll probably never know that answer, Munehisa wonders how Sakura takes his coffee.  
  
Empty plates stained with lingering sauce are the only things left on the table. Sakura is telling stories about his customers, fussy people who like routines and gossip, when the bus boy comes around to gather up the plates. Munehisa glances at him and his smooth, dark hair swooped around his face.  
  
…His familiar face…  
  
As the bus boy reaches for the last plate, Munehisa shoots one hand out to grab his wrist, holding him at the table so Munehisa can study him. Sakura looks surprised, and the bus boy tries to tilt his face away. “Excuse me… sir?” The kid’s voice sounds strained, like he’s trying to use a fake one.  
  
The pieces click for Sakura at the exact same time as Munehisa.  
  
“ _You!_ ” Sakura reacts first. His chair shoves back with a screech as he stands. “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?!”  
  
Akira grips his tray harder as he tries to back away, but Munehisa has his wrist essentially cuffed. “Part timing?” Akira offers.  
  
“You’re meddling, is what you’re doing! You think I’m going to believe it’s a coincidence that I’m on a date at the same diner you work part-time? What are you trying to pull?!”  
  
…Date?  
  
Patrons notice that a customer has started chewing out a staff member, and they turn to look. Sakura is still growling like a bulldog while Akira struggles to respond with any of his characteristic courage or charm. “I just—thought it was a good idea?”  
  
“Trust me, if it weren’t for all the far worse ideas you’ve gone through with, this one would be your worst!” Sakura continues. “And—right there, your ear! Ear, _now_!”  
  
Defeated, Akira turns his head to the side. Sakura yanks a nigh-invisible coil of plastic out from under his artificially smooth hair. It’s attached to a whole cable that runs down the back of his shirt, but Sakura gets it close enough to his mouth to add, “Futaba, if your computer is warm when I touch it—you don’t want to know what I’m going to do!”  
  
_Sakura definitely said date._  
  
By this point, the shift leader has run to the table. “Excuse me, what seems to be the problem?”  
  
Sakura folds his arms. “My son didn’t tell me he was part-timing here.”  
  
In surprise, Munehisa releases Akira. How many teenagers has Sakura adopted? It might just be a lie Sakura decided to tell to make the story easier for the manager to understand, but the way Akira lowers his head supports the notion that it’s more true than not. Munehisa watches as Sakura clarifies, it’s fine that Akira works here, he permits it, and Akira can finish his shift, yes of course, he’s just blindsided is all, he had been expecting a private meal…  
  
By ‘private meal,’ he means ‘date.’  
  
With a shake of his head, Munehisa smiles. Maybe Sakura—Sojiro—doesn’t think ‘that path’ is a dead end anymore.

* * *

  
  
Far away, Futaba powers down her computer and runs an extra fan into her room to cool the hard drive faster.  
  
Less far away, Kaoru scurries out to take a train that will bring him home before his dad, praying that the trains run swiftly.  
  
Not that far away at all, the shift manager reassigns Akira to dishwashing so Sojiro and Munehisa can finish their dinner in peace.  
  
Once Sojiro has settled the bill—arguing it’ll be easier for him to collect from Akira—he asks a question. “You live in Shibuya, don’t you? I’ll walk with you.”  
  
Munehisa smirks a little. “What if it’s in the wrong way for you?”  
  
“Winter air is bracing, good for the health. If it was raining, you’d be on your own.”  
  
It’s been two hours since he met Munehisa and Sojiro is already breaking so many of his rules. It had felt like a slap in the face to hear it, but Munehisa’s comment about appearances versus honor keeps sinking in deeper. Sojiro prides himself on keeping up appearances; Leblanc wouldn’t have survived otherwise. Munehisa probably knows a thing or two about keeping up appearances too, since some of his customers might feel bold enough to push him around if he didn't keep up a tough aura. But when Sojiro thinks about a code of honor, very little of it has that much to do with romance.  
  
Strive for excellence. Maintain a port in a storm. Give second chances. Get back up, no matter what.  
  
There’s no part of Sojiro’s elaborate dating rules that matter to his code of honor.  
  
So, Sojiro finds himself walking the streets of Shibuya with Munehisa. It’s still full of people and will be for about an hour longer, but both of them are comfortable urbanites who don’t mind the rush. The crowds give their own kind of privacy.  
  
“You thought we might have been bugged from the beginning, didn’t you?” Munehisa comments.  
  
“Futaba’s eavesdropping habit used to be a lot worse. I don't often disucss things I don’t want her to hear, so it rarely matters.” Sojiro stokes his beard. “But for Akira… two weeks out of juvie, and he’s pulling a stunt like this. I expected better of him, but I’m not sure why.”  
  
“He could just be bored,” Munehisa says. “He used to have a real important part-time job. All that energy has to go somewhere.”  
  
Sojiro glances at the other man, a little shocked, but mostly relieved. It’s another thing that he doesn’t have to explain to Munehisa. “He needs to put that energy in more productive directions, like his finals.” He starts to laugh a little as a thought occurs to him. “Though, maybe we’re getting slow, if all he needs to do to fool us is straighten his hair and not wear glasses.”  
  
“We’ll be sharper next time.”  
  
_Next time…_  
  
Munehisa’s apartment isn’t all that far away, and it’s not ridiculously out of Sojiro’s way, either. When they arrive at the front doors, separating the street from the stairs, the shivers that Sojiro had finally learned to ignore come back. He’s not exactly sure what to do.  
  
“That invite to go to a shooting range stands,” Munehisa announces, maybe just to fill the air.  
  
“We’d both need to close shop for most of a day to go,” Sojiro muses. An instant later, he realizes he could be misinterpreted. “Not that I don’t want to go. It’d feel good to clear away the rust. See if I still got it. I just…”  
  
Munehisa folds his arms and waits. It’s a little defensive, but it’s also late February.  
  
“I had a good night,” Sojiro manages. “Or… this was nice, is what I mean. And I think we should do it again. But you’re a good man, and I don’t want to get your hopes up. That’s not fair, and we’re not young anymore.”  
  
“What does that matter?”  
  
“We carry a lot of history with us. I don’t know how much of yours you want to share… or how much of mine I’ll ever want to share, but… what I’m trying to say is, I don’t know how fast I can change my ways. I don’t know if they’ll change fast enough for you.”  
  
“But you _want_ to change,” Munehisa says. “That’s what you’re getting at, yeah?”  
  
It’s hard to say, but Sojiro nods. He’s made changes before, and after a night with Munehisa, being more honest with himself is starting to feel like a change he can make.  
  
“Then that’s enough.” Munehisa smiles again. “So long as we see each other again, the rest will work out.”  
  
A wave of relief sweeps the shivers away—the ones not caused by the winter air. Sojiro’s phone is still off, but he has a business card for Leblanc in his pocket, with the address and the landline telephone. He flips the card over and jots his personal cell number down.  
  
“Is this so you don’t have to save my number?” Munehisa snarks, and Sojiro manages to laugh as well.  
  
“Soon as I get the spyware off my phone, I’ll save it. I promise.”  
  
Munehisa pockets the business card. “Good enough. I’ll see you later, then.”  
  
“See you.”  
  
He crosses through the doors to the stairs. Sojiro slips his hands in his pockets and walks back to a more congested street that will take him to the train, then to Yongen-Jawa.  
  
Two months ago, something happened to the world. When Sojiro closes his eyes, he can just about picture it: everything around him falling to ruin as people became so complacent, they didn’t even care to create the world they lived in, like a gardener who refused to grow food but still expected to eat. With each day that passes, that day feels more like a dream. Sojiro is trying to cope with the idea that someday it will only be a dream to him, even if Akira and Futaba and the rest of the kids never forget.  
  
He hopes he’ll at least remember what it felt like that day. That sense of hope and strength shared through the city, practically the world. The desire to place his hand on something and say, _this is real, this is important, and I will protect it._  
  
He feels that hope with Munehisa.  
  
In his own head, it's still so difficult for Sojiro to contemplate romance with him. The mechanisms are there—lips for kissing, hands for touching—but apart from knowing they exist, Sojiro has never used them with a man. He’ll need to change quite a lot before he’s ready for any of it.  
  
It makes him smile that Munehisa is willing to wait. And with that smile on his face, Sojiro makes his way home.


End file.
